Freelance web design is a hot industry, and it’s becoming more and more competitive every day. So to be a stand-out success in the field, it’s important that designers offer their clients above-and-beyond service and support—far above merely making deadlines and being responsive to questions and concerns. And what exactly are clients looking for in a web designer? Check out these five necessities:
Be a web hosting affiliate
Although the more tech-savvy clients already have their own server infrastructure, there’s lots of opportunities for clients who need a host. So offer them a package — one which is quick and easy for you to set up—at no additional cost. And the bonus is, the hosting company will pay you a commission.
Have bonus offers
Offer to give the client something for free, and you’ll increase referrals and repeat business. But make the bonus something easy to prepare, simple and useful, such as starter content on the site (which you can pull from an old site if they have one), one-year free support and free backup handling.
Make a good first impression
It doesn’t matter how talented you are as a designer if you can’t attract clients: respond immediately to communications (within half a work-day at least); consider using a proposal software program like Bidsketch; and employ a project management app like Teambox that ensures you don’t miss a deadline or a file sent from you client.
Deliver in parts
Rather than completing the entire project at once and crossing you fingers that the client likes it, create sub-deadlines and send them parts on a regular schedule. Then, if they don’t like a particular part, you can act quickly to address the problems. Otherwise, you could waste a mountain of time starting from scratch.
Offer some education
Teach your clients what they need to know in working with their new site. This can be accomplished easily by sending them to online training tutorials (WordPress has a great one), or creating the training material yourself—if you’re really ambitious, create it in the form of video tutorials for a nice “wow” factor that has the potential for future referrals.
